Appeal in stucco suit targets attorney communication

COLUMBIA — The news media, a past town hall meeting, and attorneys’ community outreach make up an offshoot dispute arising from a years-old legal battle over Sun City home construction.

Next month, the S.C. Court of Appeals will hear an aspect of the class action lawsuit affecting potentially thousands of Sun City property owners who may have faulty stucco on their homes.

At issue: The alleged “promotional activities” of the Sun City homeowners’ legal team.

South Carolina State Plastering’s appeal challenges last year’s circuit court denial of an injunction aimed at restricting communication from the attorneys to the homeowners who make up the class.

Attorneys for the plastering company also suggested local news media had been used as a tool of the side representing property owners.

The company argued it’s not trying to exercise a monopoly over communication with homeowners, but instead level out a tilted playing field. Among those listed as third-party defendants are Del Webb Communities, Inc., Pulte Homes, Inc., and Kephart Architects, Inc.

Attorneys for the Sun City homeowners pushed back against the appeal and said just as the defendants had been contacting Sun City residents, “offering to perform spot or patch repairs in exchange for an agreement of the homeowner to opt-out of the class action.”

In documents filed in February, the Sun City attorneys argued the company was trying enact a one-sided ban on information.

They said, “it has relied on the irrelevant and sometimes just plain inaccurate themes (argued at the trial court) in an attempt to stop any relevant information regarding this litigation from reaching the potentially 4,000-plus homeowners at Sun City who have defective stucco systems installed on their homes.”

But in challenging the court’s refusal to restrict communication, the company attorneys pointed to a conflict of interest.

They said the homeowners’ side has a financial incentive to gather as many people to the class as possible.

“They may, and by such actions as holding ‘town meetings’ and seeking press coverage of developments in the litigation, have encouraged maximum participation in the (suit),” argues the company attorneys.

“Such participation may not, however, be in the best interest of some homeowners who may be encouraged to join.”

The role of local news media also figured into the company’s objections. Attorneys suggested journalists may have been used by the side representing Sun City property owners.

“Obviously, the fact that a reporter’s name is on a story does not preclude the possibility that the story was planted or stimulated by some action of an interested attorney,” reads a footnote in a company brief.

In 2010, the state Supreme Court tossed out an earlier decision when it ruled that a lawsuit filed by Anthony and Barbara Grazia in 2007 could be a class action suit.

That created the possibility that scores of other Sun City homeowners might be compensated for defective stucco.

The couple’s allegation, according to records, is that “the stucco exteriors had common and typical problems inherent to their design and installation that would require identical remediation across the class, namely, stripping the homes of the existing stucco and recladding with a properly installed stucco system.”